Church of All Saints

Parish church, comprising aisleless nave and lower chancel with S porch and W front added in 1849-50. Early English style. Squared, grey Silurian slate-shale brought to course. Base plinth has large quarry-faced blocks, with tooled masonry above to sill-course, and smooth facing above. Bath-stone E window tracery, and in porch. Steep slate roofs with coped gables and chancel cross. 4-bay nave has windowless first bay, lancets elsewhere, with stepped buttresses between bays. Moulded sill course and moulded course linking hoodmoulds, both interrupted by buttresses. Chancel is windowless to sides, E end has diagonal buttresses, sill-course, ashlar stepped triplet window with linked hoodmoulds continued in stepped string-course. Quatrefoil in gable. 1849-50 W front is of different stone and has 2 lancets flanking a big mid buttress carrying a tall slim octagonal spire, of intricate design. The buttress itself is a fine example of High Victorian design, solid geometrical shapes subtly eliding until octagonal spirelet breaks free. Upper part of spire has squat bell-stage with 8 small cusped bell-lights under stone steep octagonal spire with 4 tiny lucarnes. S side has 1849-50 porch in first bay and memorial sun-dial on SE buttress to John Morgan 1858. Porch has pointed, flat-chamfered arch with compound piers, a moulded course across below gable and gable coping with cross finial. Cusped rafter-roof and trefoiled lights in side walls. S door has pointed arch with roll and fillet mouldings, and Early English responds.

Interior is relatively austere with plastered walls and plain chamfered pointed chancel arch. Nave has surprisingly low-pitched roof of late C15 type, three tie-beam trusses with wall-posts and arched braces on corbels. W bell-tower protrudes into nave, with corbelled upper parts and a flat-headed opening at ground-level. Chancel is contrastingly ornate with fine ashlar Early English detail modelled on Salisbury Cathedral. Ashlar altar with cusped panels, full-width panelled reredos, a blind arcade of 7 bays with pointed arches, column shafts and moulded capitals. Roll-moulded sill-course over, under stepped triple lancet E window, also shafted with moulded arches. Roof is steep-pitched with oak mock hammerbeam trusses with pendants.

Fittings: Oak pews with curved bench-ends. W windows have stained-glass by C. Evans & Co, 1888. 5 nave windows are by Celtic Studios, 1950s and later, with a sixth of 1938, by C.C. Powell. Oak hexagonal pulpit of 1839-40 with plain panelling and stick baluster stair. Oak eagle lectern at foot. 4 exceptional ornate Gothic Revival metal chandeliers, each 12-branched with crocketted octagonal ogee-topped centre shaft. Low screen of 1839-40, a short length of oak rail each side with cusped balustrading. Richly coloured E window glass of the 1850s, probably by Wailes. Oak plain altar rail. Chancel wall-tablets to M.D., G.G. and I. Williams of Cwmcynfelin.